This is a common concern, though I think it’s helpful to zoom out a bit – what employers most care about is that you can prove to them that you can solve the problems they want solved.
Insofar as that relates to your past experience (which is only one factor among many they’ll look at), my impression[1] is that what matters is whether you can tell a good story about (i) how your past experience is relevant to their job and (ii) what steps have let you to wanting to work for them.
This is partly an exercise in communication. If your CV doesn’t naturally lead to the job, you might want to spend more time talking with friends / advisors about how to connect your past experience to what they’re looking for.
It depends even more on whether you had good reasons for changing, and whether you’ve built relevant career capital despite it.
I can’t evaluate the latter from here, so I might throw the question back to you: do you think you’ve changed too often, or was each decision good?
I’m sympathetic to the idea that early career, a rule of thumb for exploration like “win, stick; lose, shift” makes sense (i.e. if a career path is going ahead of expectations, stick with it; and otherwise shift), and that can lead to lots of shifting early on if you get unlucky. However, you also need to balance that with staying long enough to learn skills and get achievements, which increase your career capital.
*How to successfully apply to jobs isn’t one of my areas of expertise, though I have experience as an employer and in marketing, and have read about it some.
Hi Matt,
This is a common concern, though I think it’s helpful to zoom out a bit – what employers most care about is that you can prove to them that you can solve the problems they want solved.
Insofar as that relates to your past experience (which is only one factor among many they’ll look at), my impression[1] is that what matters is whether you can tell a good story about (i) how your past experience is relevant to their job and (ii) what steps have let you to wanting to work for them.
This is partly an exercise in communication. If your CV doesn’t naturally lead to the job, you might want to spend more time talking with friends / advisors about how to connect your past experience to what they’re looking for.
It depends even more on whether you had good reasons for changing, and whether you’ve built relevant career capital despite it.
I can’t evaluate the latter from here, so I might throw the question back to you: do you think you’ve changed too often, or was each decision good?
I’m sympathetic to the idea that early career, a rule of thumb for exploration like “win, stick; lose, shift” makes sense (i.e. if a career path is going ahead of expectations, stick with it; and otherwise shift), and that can lead to lots of shifting early on if you get unlucky. However, you also need to balance that with staying long enough to learn skills and get achievements, which increase your career capital.
*How to successfully apply to jobs isn’t one of my areas of expertise, though I have experience as an employer and in marketing, and have read about it some.